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Welcome to Ars Technica v5.0!

Welcome to Ars Technica v5. redesign.

Customizations

We're back in Black! After a brief hiatus, the black site is back. You can switch to it by clicking on Customizations up top. Other creature comforts include font size and topic filtering. Hate Apple news? Uncheck it using the "Filter this story view" link in the Latest Top Stories bar. Hate gaming? Click-a-pow. Whatever you filter will determine the news that shows up in the Latest Top Stories box. While preferences are currently stored in a cookie, quite soon those preferences will be synced with your site login. These are some of the first fruits of getting our database migrated; more is coming.

A host of other improvements

RSS subscribers will notice that once all of the feeds are migrated over (we had to wait post-launch for this), we'll be kicking out a loaded text feed. Most of our content will be entirely available over RSS, with longer posts truncated. We've also gone with a true white background for our text columns, moving away from the grayer background of the old design. This, we hope, will improve readability. Many of you asked for this, too.

We've also added the ability to page back in time on all index pages, including the front page. Now seeing what we were up to a day or two ago is very simple.

Now a break for some thanks!

This being our fifth major redesign in our 10+ year history, we know that change is always a shock. Think about how we feel. Ars is our home on the Web, it's where we spend the majority of our days. But this redesign was the most reader-driven ever, based on the tremendous feedback we received from you all over the past few months. There were some changes that were tough for us to accept, but we listened to you and did what had to be done. Now, of course, comes the hardest part: you have to get used to it, which is like breaking in a new pair of kicks. Truth be told, we don't expect everyone to love it right off the bat, but we're confident that after some settling-in time, you're going to love it.

Special thanks have to go out to our Technical Director Kurt Mackey, Project Manager and Elite Developer Clint Ecker, CSS and HTML guru Greg Hines, and of course our Creative Director Aurich Lawson. I feel compelled to note that these guys aren't new to Ars Technica. Kurt and Aurich have actually been involved deeply in the previous two redesigns, and Clint has been involved on Ars in various projects for years. As we say around the Orbiting HQ, these guys all date to the "black site days," which is to say that they've been around for most of Ars' history, and have a real understanding of what we're all about.

In what follows, I talk a bit more about the reasoning behind some of the changes, but it's insider baseball so I saved it for last.

New Front Page

On the old Ars Technica, we had three feature promotion slots near the top of the page. Surveying and testing revealed that many people glossed over these because of their uniformity, and the (sometimes) long period between changes. Another problem with that approach was that it only hosted multiple-page articles, in general, and so it didn't really serve as a "here's what truly hot right now" spot. The new promotional area will change frequently, and will feature content from all over the site: multipage reviews, shorter posts, guides, etc. Its configuration and story count will change with the day's events, starting in a few days. Below the top promo area will be our Latest Top Stories, which are hand-selected from all sections of Ars and shown in reverse chronological order. At the very bottom of the page are the most recent stories, which aren't necessarily top stories.

So, why all the pretty pictures? You asked for it. One of the top complaints we received was that there were not enough photos and illustrations on Ars, so we're going on in.

What's up with the cityscape? Unbeknownst to many, including some of our own editors, our last design featured the Zakim Bridge in Boston. Turns out some people thought they were just pretty, abstract lines. Now that we've fully relocated to Chicago, we've adopted the skyline as a shout-out to what has in many ways been our home for a few years thanks to the randomness of hiring people for a virtual office. Equally important, Chicago is one of the most important cities on earth when it comes to architecture, and you know we're into fine details and architecture, of perhaps a different sort.

As users ask interesting questions in the discussion, I'll be sure to update here as time (and bug fixing) permits!

Where to send feedback

General reactions go right into the discussion thread below. Beyond that, we've set up this thread for bug reports, and ask that you report them there.

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Ken Fisher
Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation. Emailken@arstechnica.com//Twitter@kenfisher